


Ghosts of the Cabin

by WestCalibur (StoneSabre)



Category: God of War (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Drama, Arthur Morgan Has Low Self-Esteem, Arthur Morgan Lives, Bisexual Arthur Morgan, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, High Honor Arthur Morgan, Hurt Arthur Morgan, Hurt/Comfort, Krathur, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Post-Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow (Red Dead Redemption 2), Protective Kratos (God of War), Slow Burn, Western
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23738149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoneSabre/pseuds/WestCalibur
Summary: He’s this fearsome giant, with skin of a ghostly tone, bearing red marks like a warrior from a distant land. I can’t convey just how terrifying he really is, how his infernal glare burns my soul, and how I tremble when he speaks with a voice like rolling thunder that could only come from some kind of beast. I feel he could kill me at any moment, yet he’s the only reason I’m still alive.He found me and brought me here after I was left to die. I don’t know why he would spare me, and he’s not given me much insight as to how he cured me of my illness. He insists I rest up here, and he left no room for argument, to say the least.I should be dead by now. God knows folk would be better off for it, but this stranger seems to think my life is worth saving. He has some knowledge I have yet to grasp, but I’m left pondering how wise he is for keeping a bastard like me around. I guess I’d like to know what reason he has to show mercy to a wretched criminal.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan & Dutch van der Linde, Arthur Morgan & Hamish Sinclair, Arthur Morgan & Isaac Morgan, Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, Atreus & Kratos (God of War), Charlotte Balfour & Arthur Morgan, Eliza/Arthur Morgan, Faye/Kratos (God of War), Hosea Matthews & Arthur Morgan, John Marston & Arthur Morgan, Kratos & Calliope (God of War), Kratos & Deimos (God of War), Kratos (God of War)/Arthur Morgan, Kratos/Lysandra (God of War)
Comments: 41
Kudos: 127





	1. The Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A demon from the unknown pulls Arthur Morgan from death’s doorstep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events of this story take place immediately after Chapter Six of Red Dead Redemption II. Kratos has arrived in Arthur’s world after the events of God of War (2018).
> 
> I realize I’m potentially introducing a lot of people to an unusual crossover pairing. This story is written from Arthur’s point of view as he learns more about Kratos and his past. Writing from a Red Dead fandom prospective, I structured the story accordingly, so you’ll find it accessible even if you haven’t experienced the God of War series. I hope you’ll take some time to read what I’ve written.
> 
> The story will contain extensive spoilers for Red Dead Redemption II and the God of War series.
> 
> **tw: intense self-hatred, suicidal thoughts.**

He remembered letting the darkness take him as he watched the sun rise from the mountain, breathing through scorching lungs in his last moments.

Finding himself awake again in a den of fire was at first unexpected, then immediately and dreadfully unsettling.

Waking up next to a fire, body aching like a fractured mountain after an earthquake, wasn’t so unusual. Arthur suffered a lot of pain through numerous encounters with the law, street fights, and rival gangs wanting to kidnap him. He didn’t envy the others in his own company of outlaws who had to drag such a lumbering boor back to camp or a remote cabin, then tend to his health when he could hardly take care of himself.

Arthur knew no one would find him in the wilderness this time. The Van der Linde gang was in dire straits. Pinkerton agents swarmed their camp at Beaver Hollow, and they had no intention of sparing anyone after all the trouble they caused. Micah turned out to be a traitor feeding details about their location to the government, while convincing Dutch to turn against his loyal followers. It came down to Arthur to help John, his family, and the others who were looking for a way out. Arthur was the next in line to die for their dangerous ways, and he hoped to be the last.

He perished that very morning.

Arthur could have expected a burning hellfire would await him. He certainly feared it. There could only be one destination for him on the other side, and it most certainly wasn’t those pearly gates above the clouds.

Arthur tried to scan his surroundings, as much as he could with his bleary eyes and aching body, and he realized he was not alone in this dark hollow.

His weak croaking alerted someone... or something. Some large, shrouded figure moved towards him. If any one else could have been there to feel the ground tremble, and hear its strides thundering through the infernal chamber, they would have understood why he felt terror the way he did.

The being revealed his dreadful form to the outlaw lying before him. The embers outlined his ghostly skin. Marks were drawn like war paint upon his face and bare chest, red like the blood of sinners. He held fire from the deepest pit of Hell in his eyes.

Arthur always believed he knew what monsters were. They walked among people, and looked just like them. The ordinary person possessed a great capacity for evil - he only had to look upon the blood on his own hands to know that.

Arthur had come to a place where a monster did not have to hide his true form. A place most fitting for him to depart to, and suffer for the rest of time. There was no one better to carry out his sentence than this hellish beast.

“So... that’s what you look like.” Arthur muttered something to mask his horror. He had his whole life to prepare for eternal damnation. He supposed he should face it with dignity. The demon’s glare seared him throughout every inch of him from his skin into the depths of his cold heart. Arthur wondered if he could see into his own condemned soul if he looked into those burning eyes long enough. “Had a special place in Hell for me? You must’ve been waitin’ on me a long time.”

The devil spoke.

“Hell is much colder. I assure you.”

His drawl was of a beastly and thundering resonance. His manner was stoic and calm, but foreboding like a brewing storm. It could have been God talking to him as good as it could have been Satan. Nothing pleasant was in store for him either way.

“Heh... yeah, you’d probably know.”  
Arthur found himself chuckling, bitterly and almost silent. Not one ounce of his strength or his willpower remained. The thought of escaping his cruel fate was a hopeless and laughable idea. An eternity of suffering awaited him, and he could not even muster up the energy to show how it terrified him. But he sure as hell knew he deserved it.

Yes, he tried to do some good in the end. He figured he should make amends and help others when he could no longer help himself. But nothing could atone for a lifetime of robbing from poor folk and hurting innocent people.

“Go ahead, I guess. I ain’t fightin’ back.” Arthur whispered morbidly, turning his head away. “Ain’t no fight left in me.”

The ground rumbled again. The devil crouched down, perhaps to inspect his offering. He was sure the beast looked forward to carrying out his well-deserved sentence. But as menacing as he appeared, he held his gaze with composed curiosity, his eyes merely observant rather than predatory.

“You are not dead... and you will get your strength back, in time.”

The blurriness in Arthur’s vision was starting to wear off. He looked past the stranger to notice his surroundings appeared... normal.

There were walls around him, and the fire illuminating the chamber burned within a hearth close by. He was inside a house or cabin of sorts, arranged in a way that was somehow familiar. He tried to prop himself on his arm to get a better view of the cabin.

He immediately realized moving was an agonizing labor. All of his bruised limbs and muscles trembled and quaked. His grunt was anguished and sunken like a wounded animal.

“Do not move.”

“Wait,” he huffed through the effort to lift himself up, clenching his teeth through his pain. He looked across the cabin. “I know this place.”

A table sat under a window, topped with a white cloth, with two chairs on either side. He knew he sat there recently. Shadowy silhouettes of wild animals turned into trophies hung on the wall. He recognized the cabin that belonged to a dear departed friend.

“Hamish...”

The stranger’s large, callused hand touched his shoulder suddenly, making Arthur stiffen with trepidation. He thought maybe his hand would burn him, or inject him with venom or something else equally ridiculous. His overseer simply urged him to lie back down. The push was assertive, but surprisingly gentle somehow.

“Rest.”

Arthur noticed his heart racing after the stranger took his hand back. As it slowed down, he released the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

...His breath.

He took another one in... then exhaled again.

It was... easy.

He was on the mountain when the ghost of his terminal illness nearly finished ravaging his lungs with its poison. It seemed like the whole world was hunting him down. Pinkertons and government agents swarmed everywhere. Micah, the deranged predator, so viciously wanted him dead. The image of his sickening glee as he slowly beat the remaining life out of him burned in his head something fierce. And Dutch...

...

The despair his name evoked went to such depths he did not know a man could feel. Twenty years being his loyal enforcer suddenly meant nothing. Dutch wanted him dead in the end, and John right alongside him. All that talk about being his “sons” was all meaningless. Even after he watched Micah kill Susan, Dutch sided with him and turned his back on the ones who really loved him. The man he gave his entire existence to hated him so much in the end, that he would watch him bleed out and suffocate at his feet. Then he left him there... to die.

Cold air turned to fire in his lungs, searing him as he choked, as he clawed across the stone towards the edge of the cliff. He watched the dawn over the wild valley of pines, mountains, and sunlit mist one last time, just trying to grasp a fleeting moment of peace...

Yet he lied in a warm bed, awake and breathing once again, with a strange man watching over him. His body ached, but his lungs were strong like they were before tuberculosis ever ailed him.

Arthur remained in the world of the living by some feat of chance. Someone found him, his loathsome soul having nearly departed, and decided he was worth saving. He still had time to make his way back to...

“Marston.”

Arthur believed his death was inevitable once he came down with the illness. He told John to leave him behind, to let the dying man be the one to lay down his life. “Don’t look back,” he told the younger outlaw. John would be with his family, far away from Beaver Hollow, Dutch, Micah, Pinkertons and all the other bullshit. If John heeded his advice, Arthur couldn’t waste any time if he wanted to find them. As long as he was still alive, he had to make sure they were safe.

He attempted to push himself up. Bruises and exhaustion gripped every muscle. He bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming in pain. His illness was seemingly gone, but it left his body frail and weak. Of course going to find John would be difficult for some reason. Arthur cursed his luck.

His overseer held him down, seemingly less than willing to allow his departure.

“You can not move.”

“Listen... I can’t stay here,” Arthur insisted. “There are some people I need to take care of.”

“You can take care of no one in your condition.”

This time, the large man did not remove his hand from his shoulder, urging the outlaw not to bring further harm to himself. It was true what he said, and it hurt Arthur to hear it, but he refused to stay put when the others were scattered and being hunted.

He rolled out of bed and pushed himself to stand, wincing with every movement. The pale man stood up to resist his advances. Arthur took in the size of the man before him. He cast a shadow over him that chilled his heart, like storm clouds conjuring a frigid gust. Arthur didn’t often encounter men who made him feel small.

He didn’t back down, despite the stranger’s posturing. He took one step towards the door and... the other man pushed him back with merely a thrust of his hand. Arthur fell back on the bed, knocking the wind out of him.

“The hell!?” Arthur crudely exclaimed as he stood back up, slightly disoriented. “I’m leaving this place, mister. I don’t want no trouble.”

Again, the stranger pushed him back.

“You are staying.”

“I ain’t stayin’ here.” Arthur raised his voice.

The stranger pushed back against his every attempt to leave the cabin. Arthur tried to get through, to no avail. The larger man did not yield.

“Let me go!”

“You will stay put.”

Arthur felt as if he was back at Beaver Hollow arguing with Dutch. His "leader" wasn’t appreciative of Arthur going about his own way protecting the gang. He rather liked to pretend his “son” was still an unruly child needing to learn his place. The memory struck a tender nerve, considering the recent upheaval and turmoil.

"Get out of my way!" The outlaw barked. Arthur swiped at the other man to push him aside. The stranger caught his wrist, and kept his grip locked onto him. Arthur growled as his frustration boiled over. The giant responded in kind with narrowed eyes and flared nostrils, in the way that a large beast might intimidate another to mark its territory.

“I will fight you if I have to!” Arthur challenged. It was the most ridiculous threat he could muster.

Arthur tried to wrestle his arm free. The stranger’s grip was firm and overpowering, not so aggressive as to hurt Arthur, but he applied more pressure as the seconds passed.

“Choose your next words carefully,” the stranger warned.

The outlaw realized, perhaps with some exasperation, he was not leaving without a fight. He tightened his fist. His brow creased. His eyes turned strained and bloodshot. He let the wild man inside him take control.

“I’m not afraid of you.” Arthur boasted through clenched teeth.

The demon revealed his own fury to meet the outlaw’s combativeness. Arthur saw the fire in his eyes re-emerge. He bore his teeth ever so slightly, a warlike snarl emerging from his depths. He bellowed dangerously low.

“You should be.”

Every moment the outlaw defied him further deepened the giant’s ferocity. Waves of terrible power and anger brimmed to his surface. His grip on the outlaw’s wrist tightened, silently threatening to crush his bones.

Arthur felt like prey at the mercy of a tremendous beast. So he resorted to instinct, the way the survivor inside him fought and fled from terrible men and creatures alike.

Everything that happened next was a blur. Arthur lunged forward. His body crashed. The collision rattled him like a wagon running into stone. Arthur was hauled around as he staggered and he lost sight of the stranger and the fire, now facing the dark wall behind him. Arms were pinning him across his shoulders and his lower chest with alarming swiftness and tact. Arthur was locked in.

“Get the hell off me!”

He succumbed to fear as the larger man constrained him from behind. He tried to fight back, but he only thrashed about ineffectively under the giant’s ironclad grip. Much of the strength Arthur needed to break free was spent on his confrontation on the mountain. His body ached too much. The heat of the fire clawed the sweat from his brow. Dripping streams of salt burned his eyes.

“I have... to find them...” Arthur seethed, exhaustion and desperation creeping on him like a wild stallion about to be broken.

“Free yourself. Prove that you can survive.” The monster’s guttural whisper chilled the skin on his neck.

These desperate struggles were becoming a frequent occurrence. His odds worsened against every skirmish with the law and bastards like Micah. His illness dragged him down. He didn’t have the wit to make up for the strength he lost. He wasn’t wise like Hosea.

_“Just give up, Blacklung.”_

He heard that rat taunting him from the abyss. Arthur feared he was somewhere in the darkness watching him squirm, relishing how he’d become so weak. Micah worked wonders turning their leader against Arthur and striking when he was most vulnerable, because all sense of honor was beneath him.

Arthur erupted with a despairing roar, as he fought the stranger and the battle raging inside. His wild anger could not overcome his broken body, his heart’s sorrow, and the terrors in his head. Arthur shut his eyes in his need to fight off the storm of grief. His heart raced. His pulse pounded against his migraine. Heat left him through frantic bursts of air. The stranger constricted him tighter as his resistance weakened, until he stopped thrashing altogether.

The demon slowly subdued him. The room became quiet again. The outlaw struggled for air to soothe his raw nerves. He exhausted his screams, leaving him with an aching hollowness. As the war in his mind became too harrowing, weariness took over his body. He lost another fight, with devastating swiftness.

_“It’s over, Arthur.”_

“No... Dutch...” a mournful whimper escaped through his lips. As the giant kept him contained in his arms, the storm of nightmares kept coming. Hosea. Lenny. Sean. Susan. Molly. Eagle Flies. He watched skin breaking and blood spraying out of every friend taken by a bullet. He trembled as his nails dug into the skin of the pale man’s arm, desperate to block out the gruesome images.

The stranger became oddly still. He steadied himself, and his fury seeped back beneath his ashen skin. Somehow, the screams of the outlaw didn’t fall on deaf ears. The stranger slowly loosened his grip, letting one arm fall, but holding the other across the smaller man’s chest, keeping him enclosed in his rigid bulk. He did not push the weary outlaw away despite their perceived animosity.

They stayed like this for some time, until the giant was sure the other man would no longer resist. His torso expanded against Arthur’s back as they breathed at different paces, the outlaw’s erratic and the stranger’s deep and steady.

“You can not help them.”

The stranger’s voice softened as he shifted his methods to calm the outlaw. The truth of his words pierced his heart like a bullet. As riddled with holes as it was, what was another?

The stranger finally released him, but Arthur couldn’t find his footing. His legs gave out and his body collapsed, paralyzing storms of pain flooding over him one after another. The hurt that Micah beat into him returned with a vengeance.

_“You’re weak, Morgan.”_

The outlaw’s limbs trembled as he barely stopped himself from hitting the ground. Arthur was only beginning to understand how utterly broken he was. He used to be a fighter. He was the Van der Linde gang’s reliable workhorse. This weakness frightened him. He couldn’t even stand up anymore.

_“You turned your back on us, Arthur.”_

He mourned for everything he lost, and all the while the voices of the men who left him for dead continued to taunt him. No one was there to stop him from spiraling. Ghosts painted over the shadows of his eyelids with blood. The dead outlaws of the Van der Linde gang lied together to create a corpse-ridden canvas. He clawed at his scalp, wanting to rip the nightmares from his head. Instead he only reminded himself of the blood on his hands.

A touch on his shoulder staggered him. The other man pulled his hand back, noticing the vulnerable outlaw’s distress. The impasse that ensued froze time around them. The giant’s hand approached again, slower this time, bypassing the tension between their gazes. The jarring change from his earlier hostility greatly confused Arthur, but he realized as the larger man’s hand met his skin that he’d broken through the chaos inside of him. He still saw ghosts and heard voices taunting him from the darkness, but the demon’s glare burned through it all, keeping the shadows at bay.

“I will not hurt you.”

The stranger put him at ease somehow. After a pause, the larger man hooked his other arm around him to support his body, allowing the outlaw to heave himself up by the giant’s shoulder. Arthur stood up and trudged to the bed with a limp, the larger man helping him along. The stranger was careful not to injure him further as he urged him to sit.

A quiet moment followed. There was no sound in the cabin but the wind passing through Arthur’s trembling lungs. It felt heavier the longer the silence stayed.

_You can not help them._

With the echo of the stranger’s words, Arthur contemplated the memories of his companions, their bodies shot dead and bleeding out in the mud. They were all a bunch of dead men and he was trying to run after their corpses.

Arthur couldn’t be far behind following them into an early grave. Drying blood stains marked his clothing. Micah left his body bruised and bleeding. His torn shirt hung loose off his chest, revealing how gaunt he had become in the wake of his disease. He suffered through so much brutal turmoil in so little time. He did not want to acknowledge how much it destroyed him. He was a damn fool thinking he could be a hero for John and his family now.

“Why did you bring me here?”

Arthur could not hold back his bitterness as he asked his question. There was a part of him that wished the stranger just left him to die.

The pale man gave no answer.

“Do you just... go around the woods savin’ people? Is that it?”

It seemed like a ridiculous thought when it occurred to him, but upon saying it, some dark corner of his mind wondered if this man wasn’t so different from him.

Arthur vehemently rejected that thought. Maybe the stranger believed he was doing something good, but Arthur knew he was not worth saving. He could die trying to find his way back to John. He deserved that over sitting in a cabin not knowing if the others were out of harm’s way.

Arthur strained to stand up again, lungs wheezing as he did. He knew he must have resembled a starving lone wolf dragging a broken paw through the woods.

Surges of pain ravaged his weary limbs. His faltering heart sabotaged his last attempt to leave the cabin. As Arthur’s buckling knees dragged him down, the stranger’s arms broke his fall. He led Arthur to sit on the ground gently and painlessly.

Sweat covered his brow as he tried to pull himself back together. His gasps were haggard and quivering. His lungs nearly killed him before, and now they were all that kept his broken body from falling apart at the seams. Whether he lived or died, he thanked his maker he would no longer suffer those ragged blades carving up his chest. That was one comforting thought.

For as long as he struggled not to crumble to pieces, the stranger crouched beside him, hands on his shoulders, helping to hold him together.

“You will die if you leave this place.”

Another bitter chuckle racked his being. He felt like a ghost already. The thought that his body would perish didn’t quite evoke the same alarm it used to.

“I don’t have a choice, friend.” He still laughed, in an abhorrent way. The depth of his grief seemed bottomless - he swore he was drunk on it. “Just let me die. Kill me yourself, why don’t you?”

Arthur wanted his life to end. He was a horrible man. Years of mistakes, losses, and senseless violence were the ashes of the destructive fire in his soul. He hoped John, Abigail, and Jack would carry on after he helped them escape. It was all the chance he had to do something right, after a whole life of doing wrong. John could be free to live and make an honest life with the people he loved. The ones Arthur loved were dead in the ground, and he knew his path only lead to a grave right next to them. It’s what he deserved for failing to protect them.

“I ain’t got nothing left no more. Just put an end to me... please...”

The giant took his hands off the outlaw. He stood up, towering over where Arthur sat by the hearth. The beaten man dared himself not to tear his eyes away.

The fire’s light danced around the fiend as if enacting a ritual of sacrifice. His torso swelled as he syphoned air from his core like a raging bull. An energy flowed from him that was violent and horrific, an almost eldritch gust choking the air to every corner of the dark chamber.

Arthur felt assured the monster would carry out his wish. Should his nightmares end with his life, then he gladly welcomed his death. He awaited the beast to draw his blood.

“No.”

The demon did not subjugate the outlaw to his wrath. He drew himself back and expelled the crushing energy of malice radiating from him, like it would have overwhelmed him if he held it any longer.

The stranger backed away. He distanced himself until he reached the bed and sat down. His strides were recognizably weary.

Another quietness came, more eerie than the silence before. The stranger tore his eyes away, closing them as he rested his hands before his face. There were subtle movements in his furrowed brow. His chest rose and fell at a deliberate pace. The demon was... shaken. He sat with wide posture, his size no less tremendous and imposing even as he no longer stood. His act of mercy seemed at odds with his very being. Arthur saw the scars upon his skin, and his sunken eyes, where they once held great ferocity but were now weld shut to reign in his madness.

The stranger was a portrait of a sullen deadman. He let his guard down and showed himself to be a ravaged soul, lending a hand to a poor lost bastard like him for less than purely virtuous reasons. There were few things that betrayed someone’s past more than anger and scars.

Arthur could have imagined the stranger sitting at a campfire. He could have thought he was another in his company of criminals and outcasts, most likely longing for a drink after a long day of doing honest or dishonest work for the gang, and perhaps dwelling on some story about how he robbed or killed someone and had regrets about it. He could have imagined everything else - the cool breeze in the trees, the gentle chords of a guitar, a bowl of stew in his lap, and drunkards singing a ditty over at the poker table. And he could have laughed for being such a fool trying to live in his memories.

The giant began to slowly rise amongst the phantoms of his imagined cemetery. He jolted Arthur’s fear as he came forward, but the outlaw did not brace for his approach. He could only submit to the stranger’s every intention. Their gazes confronted each other again. Fire still burned in the demon’s eyes, though it softened to a calm ember.

“You will live.” 

The stranger offered his hand to the outlaw at his mercy. He spoke this time with such an air of calmness and conviction. Arthur nearly believed he was right.

The outlaw took his hand.

He moved back to the bed, using the larger man’s shoulder to support him. The stranger gave one parting glance before leaving his side. He made his way past the fireplace, then stopped abruptly in the center of the cabin. With bated breath, the outlaw anticipated the stranger would say something.

The fire’s spectral radiance wrapped around his red marks and caressed the muscles on his back, as he cast a great shadow across the wooden floor. His shoulders’s expanded as he breathed in, and his shadow grew with him. A growl rumbled from his chest as he exhaled, then he simply continued on his way without a word. _What a strange creature._

A large tool - an axe with a wooden handle - sat upon the table on the far side of the cabin. The stranger grabbed it before reaching for the door leading outside.

“Hey, where you goin’?” Arthur called out to him, his tone betraying his anxiety.

“You need nourishment,” the departing stranger answered. “I will bring us food.”

He made his exit, leaving the light of the fire and disappearing like the night’s apparition. The cabin was silent again. Shadows danced along the walls. The fire crackled. The isolated mountain shelter was a far cry from the commotion of an open camp Arthur was accustomed to. He felt disoriented by the haunted scene. He closed his eyes and inhaled, resting his face in his shaking hands and pulling back from the edge from which he was fatally close to falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m highly encouraging commentary and engagement with this story. I don’t have a beta reader. Tell me if you like the idea of Arthur/Kratos. Give your criticism. Point out any grammar issues. Even if all you can say is you liked the chapter, please say so in the comment section.
> 
> You can also visit me on tumblr. I can answer comments on my inbox there. **westcalibur.tumblr.com**


	2. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The demon provides the outlaw a mysterious serenity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tw: suicidal thoughts, self-hatred, mild blood and gore.**

Arthur did not dare to fall asleep. He was scared to. He hated the stillness of the air, and the sounds of creaking lumber. Ghostly whispers replaced the commotion of an open camp. The fire’s dancing flickers held the cabin in a spell. The cruel moment in which he lingered began to hollow out his senses.

His splitting migraine, bruised limbs, and weary bones were heavier than any chain that ever held him down. The haunting voices on the breeze echoed the words traded at Beaver Hollow, prolonging the finality they carried. The woods were a blur as he fled with John, gunshots thundering through the mist shrouding the trails of Roanoke Ridge. The younger outlaw begged him not to stay behind. Arthur saw no way other than to throw his fleeting life to the ghouls, if it bought John more time to escape.

His family was broken and scattered. He may never see them again. Many had died. The ones who survived may have been captured, and he was too weak to save them. The thought sunk in his heart like a bullet buried in an old wound.

Why was he still alive? Death seemed to be all that awaited him at the end of his grueling path. Though he was still breathing, there hardly existed a world he recognized any longer.

Arthur was not willing to face the ruins of his own life. The night should have taken him, once the sun had set on the dying West. He would not meet the violent end he imagined, dying alongside his brothers while staring down the end of a barrel. He would have preferred to go that way, without the isolation and time for the last of his sanity to rot away.

He watched the shadows in the cracks of the timber, to keep from seeing the canvas of ghosts when he closed his eyes. Faces drifted from the edges of his dazed vision. He saw friends and enemies, guilty and innocent. Faces with names he had remembered and forgotten. Some he helped, amongst the many he hurt. Numerous were those he watched die by the bullet, the knife, and the fist.

He felt no horror like seeing the faces of the poor and the lost that he made his prey. He remembered every soul that trembled and cowered as if he was the spirit upon Death’s horse. He knew their terror, as reflections of the monster he became in their eyes, and felt it like blood becoming pulses of hatred burrowing through his own skin.

So quiet was the cabin. He lied awake for moments that seemed to stretch into hours, hearing the crackling fire until he believed he felt it scorching him through his flesh and searing his fractured heart.

The faintest of voices invited him into the dreadful void. He was afraid to go... for the loneliness of it all.

...

The cabin door opened again. Footsteps thundered throughout the chamber, shattering the spectral conjurations reaping upon Arthur’s state of mind. The stranger had returned. 

The pale giant hardly acknowledged him as he carried a whitetail buck into the cabin. His immense shadow engulfed the walls as he moved before the hearth. He drew a knife from the sheath strapped to his waist.

Arthur’s eyes followed the stranger as he lowered the animal before the fire, bending his knee as if giving tribute. He took an interest in his choice of game.

The stag often appeared in his dreams when he slept. Every dream was similar - the deer would graze by the river in a woodland hidden in the far lands of the west. Beams of sunlight pierced the foliage, painting the forest mist in golden radiance.

The creature was kind enough to tend to him when he lied on the stone facing the rising sun. It smiled at him as he went under, soothing his last breath of all his pain. Such a departure seemed too peaceful for what he deserved, were it to be his last moment on this Earth.

“I hope that creature didn’t suffer before it died.” Arthur felt compelled to say for unclear reasons.

“It did not suffer.” The stranger answered as he readied his knife. He first pierced the deer’s skin with the blade and started cutting lines through its fur, creating a pelt. He did not remove his gauntlets covering his wrists. His hands became red with its blood. It took only seconds for the stranger to pull the skin off and roll it up to his liking. He put that aside and began to carve up its meat.

The stranger was a man of the wilderness. It came as no surprise to see he was a skillful hunter. He butchered his prey with strength and precision. Every push of the knife was deliberate. The fire’s light embraced his bulk as he settled into his aggressive rhythm. His muscles rolled and tensed with every movement - a modest display of his virility.

The giant leaned into the fireplace from where he kneeled, and placed slabs of meat into the pot to cook. The floor shifted under his weight. His eyes became lost in the fire. His shadow spread out from the floor of the hearth to the walls and ceiling of the cabin, a lingering phantom shrouding the ember.

The interest Arthur took in the stranger’s actions gave him pause. His presence broke the deafening loneliness from moments prior. He had a way of commanding a quietness in his mind. A strange comfort.

Neither man spoke. Arthur continued to watch him. When the stranger finished cooking the venison, he reached for a bowl placed on the shelf over the fireplace, next to a small, roughly embellished flask. He pushed the bowl into the pot, and used his knife to scoop out slices of meat.

“That don’t burn you?”

“It does.” The stranger assured flatly as he filled the bowl. He stood up with a push on his knee and moved to deliver his sustenance. The outlaw turned his eyes away.

“I don’t need you to feed me.” Arthur grumbled. The stranger paused, before bluntly placing the bowl at his side.

“Do not starve yourself.”

Arthur didn’t move. A bout of stubbornness came to him, as it often did, for reasons he did not quite grasp. The stranger didn’t stand to argue with him. He stepped away from the bed. When Arthur noticed the giant nearing the door, he shivered with cold dread.

“Wait!”

His outcry froze the stranger in his tracks.

“Don’t leave.”

The tone of his plea betrayed his desperation. He did not feel compelled to hide his fear, to his shame. He’d truly grown to hate his own solitude.

The stranger held still for a fraught moment. Arthur watched him breathe, his back rising and falling. He stepped away from the door. His immense shadow grazed the walls as he came back to the outlaw’s side. The demon’s eyes peered into him, holding a calmer inferno. He kneeled at the bedside.

“Then I will stay.”

Arthur’s turned wearily to face the ceiling again. He noted the age of its wood. Shadows of the flame danced along its subtle rot. He took in a breath. Not much time passed since the death of the veteran whom this cabin once belonged to. Arthur was nearby when Hamish was impaled by the tusk of a wild boar. Another life he failed to protect.

“You should’a let me die.”

The stranger withdrew very faintly. His eyes grew distant. Only a touch of the giant’s hand on his own neck betrayed his buried reticence. His manner became contemplative.

“You need time.”

Arthur focused a look at the stranger. He carried only glimpses of a burning flame from some place far away in his solemn gaze. Some intuition told him the stranger could understand his grief, behind the sternness of his bearing.

He asked himself how familiar an acquaintance death was to the stranger. Enough was told by the scars he bore on his skin and the weapons he wielded. With a clearer mind, he thought about the ghostly man’s own solitude. He pondered the questions behind the stranger’s emergence, but he wondered moreso if he could help him overcome this feeling of loss... God willing he was deserving of that grace.

Time could not restore what he lost. The world he knew faded into a tragic memory with every passing moment. There was no work to be done. There was no dream to pursue. No one left to protect. Arthur could never be strong enough to heal a broken family. He could not defeat the hunters that preyed upon his brothers and sisters lost in the night.

Arthur recoiled away, drained of his will to face the other soul in the room. He remembered the moment years ago when he realized the vastness of the emptiness inside of him. He had not known a day when he felt whole. He knew all too well just how alone he always was, and it was on that day that he stopped denying it.

He closed his eyes. He possessed an impulse to conceal his sadness, but no longer a need to. His head became heavy with burning tears.

Arthur heard the stranger moving, reminding him of his presence. He hated knowing how pathetic the pale man must have seen him. How pitiful was he to think pride was worth anything now?

The stranger stepped back. Arthur did not know how far he would go, as he no longer faced him. He listened to his heavy footsteps, stopping after two. He then heard the floor creaking. The other man did not move far, respecting the outlaw’s earlier request.

The cabin was quiet again. It was the unnerving, dreadful quiet Arthur was beginning to recognize as his new normal. He wondered if he would get any sleep that night, or anytime soon.

...or perhaps he would go to sleep and never wake up again.

He had to make peace watching the shadows dance along the ceiling, like the edges of the void perpetually trapping him in a cursed limbo.

“You are ashamed to grieve...”

The pale man’s words broke the silence. 

“What?”

He spoke softer than Arthur had so far beheld, yet still rumbled greatly with roughness like earth and ash, setting words upon his mind that somehow quieted his turmoil. Arthur wondered if he meant to pose a question.

Watching the stranger take in the fire in his calm respite, Arthur mused over his stoic facade for any hint at his thoughts. He casted a somber reflection, like the outlaws sat before the campfire in his quietest memories - an apparition of his past. Did he desire to hear the whispers behind his silence?

He bore witness to light dancing on ashen skin, feint shadows emerging in the crevices of his rugged bulk. He felt it again. The way the strange man commanded his mind, staving off his dread. Arthur focused on him, and no longer on the dark cracks on the rotting wood, and the voices of phantoms.

The stranger did not move. He committed to granting the outlaw his presence. Arthur was grateful. Before long, his eyes grew heavy with every moment he observed. Knowing the pale man would respect his wish, he allowed himself to rest.

It was the stranger’s words, not the ghostly whispers, that echoed in his sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Based on the comments I received from the first chapter, I am floored by the reaction. I never imagined seeing so much enthusiasm about this concept. You all make me even more excited to explore this pairing.
> 
> This chapter was a bit shorter than the first, but I hope that it measures up to the previous in its quality. I’m gonna try my hardest not to keep you all waiting as long for the third chapter.
> 
> Please keep sending me your comments. Whether it’s compliments or criticism, engaging with you all helps me to stay committed.
> 
> I’m also open to conversations on tumblr and Twitter.  
>  **westcalibur.tumblr.com**  
>  Twitter: **@WestCalibur**


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